USS Betelgeuse, a 7476-ton Arcturus class cargo ship, was built at Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1939 as the merchant freighter Mormaclark. The Navy purchased her in late May 1941 and placed her in commission as USS Betelgeuse in mid-June, while she was undergoing conversion work at Staten Island, New York. Once completed, the cargo ship was mainly employed in the western Atlantic and Caribbean areas. In April 1942, after she had completed a round-trip voyage to Great Britain, Betelgeuse made a trip to the south Pacific. Upon her return to the west coast, she loaded U.S. Marine Corps equipment and returned to the south Pacific, where she took part in the invasion of Guadalcanal in early August. She continued logistics support of the ongoing Guadalcanal Campaign until nearly the end of 1942.

During the first two months of 1943 Betelgeuse was overhauled on the U.S. west coast. She was reclassified as an attack cargo ship in February 1943, receiving the new hull number AKA-11, and transited the Panama Canal to join the Atlantic Fleet soon afterwards. She participated in the invasion of Sicily in June 1943, then was under repair until well into the next year. From May through October 1944, Betelgeuse transported cargo in the Mediterranean area. She was sent back to the Pacific early in 1945, and was part of the amphibious armada that assaulted Okinawa in April. For the rest of World War II, and during the first months after the fighting ended, Betelgeuse transported cargo across the Pacific and supported the occupation effort in Japan and China. She returned to the U.S. late in 1945. Subsequently sent to the east coast, she was decommissioned in March 1946. USS Betelgeuse was sold in June 1946.